Voter beware: US tells public how to avoid election mischief

FBI and Department of Homeland Security's cybersecurity ncy have issued a series of advisories in recent weeks aimed at warning voters about problems that could surface in election — as well as steps Americans can take to counter foreign interference threat.

issues identified in public service anuncements run gamut from spread of online disinformation about electoral process to cyberattacks targeting election infrastructure. Taken toger, advisories make clear that American ncies are tracking a broad range of potential threats that y believe voters should kw about — t just for transparency's sake but also so that voters can be prepared.

warnings come even though U.S. officials as recently as Tuesday expressed confidence in integrity of vote despite repeated efforts by President Donald Trump to denigrate it.

Some of anuncements from FBI and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security ncy:

DISINFORMATION THROUGH BOGUS INTERNET DOMAINS AND EMAIL ACCOUNTS

It's t hard to set up a fake, or spoofed, email account or website to closely resemble a legitimate one. That's precisely what FBI and CISA are warning may take place to trick Americans during election.

Cyber criminals routinely forge websites with slight misspellings or or barely perceptively alterations to dupe internet users.

In context of an election, for instance, a bogus website ending in “.com” versus “.gov” that purports to have legitimate voting information or results could trick people who visit p into thinking that what y're reading is an auntic, trustworthy government source.

Besides spreading false information, officials say, such spoofed websites and email accounts can gar personally identifiable information and spread malicious software.

One precaution voters can take is to verify spelling of websites and email addresses that may look legitimate but are actually t.

DISINFORMATION THROUGH ONLINE JOURNALS

Foreign intelligence services could use websites like pseudo-academic online journals to cause confusion around election and undermine confidence in legitimacy of its results.

That could include promoting claims of voter suppression and ballot fraud, denigrating individual political candidates, disseminating information about cyberattacks — both real and alleged — and spreading orwise misleading or unsubstantiated assertions to manipulate public opinion and discredit election process.

U.S. officials are encouraging voters to rely on trustworthy sources of information, including state and local election officials, and to verify through credible channels reports about problems about voting before recirculating m online.

FALSE CLAIMS OF HACKED VOTER INFORMATION

How someone voted is private. But information about who is eligible to vote, how often a person votes and for which party is publicly available through a variety of sources.

That’s why authorities said re was thing to be concerned about last month when Russian media reported that some U.S. voter registration information was available on a hacker’s forum.

FBI and CISA issued a reminder t long after that unnamed “foreign actors” and cyber criminals are spreading false information intended to discredit American electoral process, including by falsely claiming to have hacked and leaked voter information.

Even if those foreign actors or cyber criminals had such information, it wouldn’t do anything to stop an American from casting a ballot or to provide a way to manipulate vote. U.S. ncies say y have information that any attack targeting election infrastructure has compromised integrity of election results or accuracy of voter registration information, or prevented an election from occurring.

CYBER THREATS TO VOTING SYSTEMS

advisories describe possible threats to election infrastructure that y say may slow voting, or impede access to voting information, but that should t compromise integrity of results.

One concern relates to so-called distributed denial-of-service , or DDoS, attacks in which a server gets kcked at least temporarily offline by a flood requests, which could leave election-related websites inaccessible or slow access to voting information or results.

Even in such attacks, though, underlying voting data should t be affected, according to federal officials who say y've been working with local election counterparts to make sure y can minimize impact and recover quickly from such a disruption.

FBI and CISA say in ar of recently issued warnings that cyber actors are continuing to try to break into voter registration and vote reporting systems. But ncies say y haven't identified any incidents that could prevent Americans from voting or that could change vote tallies.

In 2016, Russia searched for vulnerabilities in state elections systems across U.S. and also breached Illiis voter registration system, probing for access to voting machines, internal networks, voter registration system, electronic pollbooks and vote reporting websites. But re is evidence that any votes were changed, or that Russian activity affected outcome.

This year, ncies say y believe that it would be difficult to manipulate votes in a way that could affect election, and that election officials have developed safeguards like provisional ballots, paper backups and backup pollbooks.

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